The non-incorporated alliance will combine Aker's subsea production and processing strengths with Baker Hughes' well completions and artificial lift technology expertise.

The alliance team, to be led by Svenn Ivar Fure from Aker Solutions and Baker Hughes' Brage Johannessen, will also focus on advancing the industry's well intervention capabilities to further optimise efficiency and reduce risks in subsea developments.

The team will be co-located in Houston.

Both companies will be able to offer any products and services to design the best solutions for their customers' production challenges.

Aker Solutions executive chairman Oyvind Eriksen said the joint commitment would strengthen both companies' businesses and help their customers unlock the "vast values that come from subsea production.

"Subsea factory development is a key focus for Aker Solutions and the partnership with Baker Hughes will provide critical capabilities that will help us develop technologies to create a fully-functioning subsea production system which will improve recovery rates and lower costs for oil producers," he said.

Baker Hughes chairman and CEO Martin Craighead said deep water fields had so far been characterised by low recovery rates and discoveries in deeper and more hostile environments were making those fields even more expensive to develop.

"The single-digit recovery rates currently being achieved at many of these fields don't support a sustainable business model," he said.

"By joining forces Baker Hughes and Aker Solutions will identify and integrate the most effective combinations of in-well and subsea technologies, enabling greater production rates - efficiently and economically - from subsea fields."